William Atkins
Wednesday, 16 September 2009 19:25
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
The exoplanet's real name is COROT-7b (previously called COROT-Exo-7b).
It is about 1.7 times the size of Earth, is about 490 light-years away (where one light-year, the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Earth-year, is about six trillions miles), and has a mass about five times that of Earth.
COROT-7b orbits about the star COROT-7, which is a star that is slightly smaller than the Sun. They are located in the constellation Monoceros.
The discovery was announced on February 3, 2009, at the
COROT Symposium 2009 held in Paris, France between February 2-5, 2009.
The discovery was also talked about by the European team at the Pathways Towards Habitable Planets conference (
Pathways2009) held in Barcelona, Spain, between September 14-18, 2009.
Additional information about the discovery will be forthcoming in a special issue about the COROT space mission within the journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The naming of the planet is all based on the COROT spacecraft mission.
Page three concludes, and talks about the COROT mission.
